Happiness and Satisfaction
by netgirly2k
Summary: Martha, I'm from another universe. Would you like to go for a drink.' Femslash


"D'you want a cup of tea?" Rose asked. TV had taught her that tea was always involved in these kinds of revelations.

"That'd be nice love." Jackie said, concentrating on feeding Rose's baby sister.

"So," said Rose, searching for teabags, "I was thinking of inviting someone round for tea."

"That's nice. Someone from work?"

"No, er, that is it is someone I met at work but it's someone I've been going out with for a while."

Jackie turned, a grin splitting her face. "Rose, you dark horse. What's his name?"

"Martha," Rose quickly handed over the tea and braced herself. "Martha Jones."

Jackie's eye's narrowed. "What's she like then?"

"Well, um, she's a little shorter than me and she's got-"

"Is she an alien?"

Rose racked her brain for anything Martha had done that seemed alien. Granted you could never be sure at Torchwood but she was fairly sure Martha was human. "No, I don't think so."

"How many hearts has she got?"

"Just the one."

"And she doesn't travel round in a police box?"

"Vauxhall Corsa."

"Is it bigger on the inside?"

"Not noticeably, no."

Jackie grinned and balanced the baby on her hip. "Bring her round after work on Friday, I'll make sure Pete's in and we can all eat together."

Rose had already started to leave the kitchen when she changed her mind, turned round and hugged Jackie. "Thank you, mum."

"You silly girl," Jackie mumbled into Rose's collar. "What did you think I was going to do, disown you?"

The baby gurgled happily.

---

"Wow," said Martha looking up the drive at the Tyler mansion. "You could fit my whole house in there about ten times."

"I know," said Rose, slamming the passenger side door of Martha's car. "Mine too."

Martha graced Rose with a strange look as the blonde walked round the car and took her hand.

"I mean," Rose corrected quickly, "our old house before we moved here."

"Ah."

"Right," Rose tugged Martha up the driveway. "We'd better get in there. And try not to be too frightened of my mum..."

Despite Rose's reassurances to Martha she was the one who stopped at the front door, fumbling with her keys for longer than necessary.

"Hey," Martha squeezed Rose's fingers, "We don't have to go in."

Rose exhaled. You've taken aliens home to mum, she told herself, this is nothing. She gave Martha a quick peck on the lips, "Nah, course we're going in."

Dinner went fairly well. The baby didn't cry and Pete kept the 'remember I hired you when you're sleeping with my daughter' looks to a minimum.

"So what is it you do at Torchwood?" Jackie asked halfway through dessert.

"I'm a doctor," Martha answered.

"A human doctor," Rose responded, perhaps too quickly because Martha looked at her oddly. "That is, a doctor of humans."

Luckily then Pete's beeper went off, followed in short order by Martha's. Rose waited but hers remained silent.

"I'll come in too," she offered.

"No," said Pete, "it's your first night off in weeks. Stay here with your mum and sister."

"I'll call you later," Martha mouthed silently as she followed Pete into the hall.

"Thank you," Rose mouthed in return.

---

"Did I miss anything interesting?" Rose asked when she answered her phone later that night.

"No, it's the usual unconscious alien. This one even looks human, if it wasn't for the two hearts I wouldn't know."

"Two hearts?"

"Yeah, and there's something weird going on with the-"

"I need to see him," Rose interrupted.

"Are you giving me an order Miss Tyler?"

Rose deliberately ignored Martha's flirtatious tones. "I'm asking for a favour..."

---

The alien looked human. She looked like a small, blonde human female. If Martha hadn't said about the two hearts Rose wouldn't even have begun to guess.

"Doctor...Doctor?"

The small woman's eyes snapped open, "I don't suppose you're asking me if I want a doctor?"

"Um..."

She looked past Rose straight at Martha, "You don't know the way back to N-space, do you?"

"Rose," Pete let himself into the medical ward letting the double doors swing closed behind him. "It's not him, that's not the Doctor."

Rose sniffed, "I know."

"Sorry," interrupted Martha, "but could someone tell me what's going on?"

"Yes," said the alien, "what she said."

---

Rose could have gone home if she wanted to be comfortable, she could be all snuggled up in her king sized bed at the mansion. Instead she was wide awake listening to Martha being cross with her in the silence.

Rose rolled onto her side; she could just about make out Martha's profile. "I don't even know why you're so mad."

"You're from a parallel universe, and you never said anything. And I had to hear about it from Pete."

"I'm sorry. No, really I am. I just couldn't find a good time to tell you."

"You could have said at the beginning.'Martha, I'm from another universe, would you like to go for a drink?' that would have made a good chat up line."

Rose winced, she really hadn't meant to hurt Martha things had just spiralled a bit. "Martha..."

"Oh, get some sleep."

---

"It's a bit different," said Jake, prodding at what the Torchwood canteen laughingly called food. "I mean most aliens when they fetch up here ask to go home or promise that they weren't really invading the earth. This is the first time one's ever asked for a job."

"She got one now," carried on Mickey, who was chewing happily on his lunch ignoring its overwhelming similarity to cardboard. "Pete's given her a lab and a load of top of the range equipment that the R&D boys have cooked up. I'm telling you, I wish I knew what Romana had said to convince Pete."

"Romana..?" asked Rose who was only half listening to the conversation.

"The Time Lord," said Mickey.

"Wouldn't that be Time Lady?" asked Jake.

"Why would it?"

"Cause she's a, y'know, girl."

"Ain't that a bit sexist?"

"Dunno. Rose, is it sexist if we call Romana a Time Lady?"

"Sorry, what?" said Rose who'd been too busy staring over Jake's shoulder to where Martha was having lunch with Owen and Tosh.

"What's up?" asked Jake.

"Martha's still not speaking to her." Mickey answered before Rose could lie.

"Oh, God. Will you just apologise already."

"I already have done."

"Do it again, you're boring when you're like this."

---

After lunch Rose passed off her paperwork onto her long suffering assistant and went in search of Martha. She expected her to be in the medical ward but she only found three comatose sontarans and a grumpier than usual Owen Harper.

"No, working here's too good for our Doctor Jones, your dad sent her to assist our new scientific advisor." Owen said that last bit with a sneer.

"Who?"

"Tiny blonde, unpronounceable name, probably mad, reckons she's a time traveller from another dimension. Hey, you two should start a club!"

"Yeah, thanks Owen."

Mickey hadn't been kidding when he'd said Pete had given Romana the most advanced equipment Torchwood had available. The lab gleamed with alien metals and twinkling lights. At the centre of it all stood Romana, blonde hair falling into her eyes as she fiddled with something that Rose was almost certain was a sonic screwdriver.

"Have you brought the tea?" Romana asked. "I don't care for it much myself, but your people insist on bringing it. I'm beginning to think that human beings run on tea."

"No, I'm looking for-"

"What do you want?" asked Martha, who'd entered the lab behind Rose.

"To talk to you outside, please?"

Rose wished she didn't have to have this discussion in a busy corridor with people hurrying by; it was particularly unhelpful that Jake was in a briefing of field agents in the next room and kept making encouraging gestures through the open door. Still, it was the first time in days Martha had so much as spoken to her so she'd better make the best of it.

"I didn't mean to lie to you, I really didn't. It's just that I met you and I really liked you, you were brilliant, you were fantastic. And I didn't have the easiest time when I first came here and I didn't want you to always think of me as that girl who was left crying on a beach in Norway."

"Why were you crying on a Norwegian beach?"

"Er, that's sort of a long story..."

Martha arched an eyebrow at her.

"Which, obviously I'm going to tell you now."

Rose was saved by Torchwood tower lurching like the earth had just opened up beneath it; Rose had been in Chile in 1960 and knew what the earth opening up felt like.

_ATTENTION HUMANS. YOUR PLANET BELONGS TO US. REMAIN CALM AND YOUR DEATHS WILL BE SWIFT AND ALMOST PAINLESS._

It was as if the words were being projected, loudly, into Rose's brain. One look around verified that everyone else had heard it too. People had dropped what they were doing and were running to where they were supposed to be in a crisis.

Rose and Martha tumbled back into the lab.

"I've been expecting this," said Romana, pocketing her sonic screwdriver. "Martha, grab the psychic energy disrupter. Rose, is there a way up to the roof of the building?"

"We can go up the fire escape."

"Alright, come on then."

Rose and Martha watched as Romana marched out of the lab into the chaos of Torchwood tower.

Martha tucked the disrupter under one arm and held her hand out to Rose, "Come on, lets go save the world."

Rose twined her fingers through Martha's. "So we're okay then?"

"Looks like. Let's go before Romana gets herself killed."

Hand in hand they ran out onto the fire escape.


End file.
